A Comparative Study Of Intracultural And Intercultural Friendship Building From The Chinese Indigenous Perspective

Living in a world mediated by global internet and fast transportation,people are witnessing increasingly frequent contacts with people from different cultural backgrounds.The possibility of forming an intercultural friendship is also boosting.However,more frequent cross-cultural contacts do not necessarily guarantee a successful intercultural friendship.More often than not,people still find it easier to form an intracultural friendship than intercultural friendship.Being able to understand the similarities and differences in forming intracultural and intercultural friendship can help us improve our intercultural communication competency and lead to more fruitful intercultural contacts.Among all the people who are met with intercultural contacts everyday are Chinese students pursuing studies overseas.Various problems and questions surface in their frequent interaction with foreign people and foreign culture,especially in their struggle to establish intercultural friendship.Thus,a comparative study on their intracultural and intercultural friendship becomes not only necessary but also potentially rewarding.In light of this,the author attempts to conduct a qualitative study using snowball sampling and the grounded theory.In-depth interviews are carried out with 17 Chinese and 3 foreigners,among whom there are 3 intercultural friend dyads.17 Chinese' intracultural and intercultural friendship formation processes are examined to find out friendship formation stages and influential factors in two friendship patterns.Then interviews with 3 foreign friends are conducted to supplement the intercultural friendship process.The author examines different friendship formation stages and probes into different influential factors like perceived similarities,frequent contact,selfdisclosure and so on.The similarities and differences of those factors in intracultural and intercultural friendship formation from a Chinese perspective are then discussed.Limitations of the study and suggestions for future study are also proposed.